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Saturday, August 31, 2013

Marshaling of forces and where to eat out.

I must say it has been difficult to get much hobby work done this week. The sheer volume of great work that many of the blogs I follow are putting out has been hard to keep up with. I know, a terrible problem to have. We also had curriculum night at the kids school which, although informative, was a tad mind numbing.

The Legions of Tropilium are coming along, I've got half of them based and primed and the other half cleared o flash and mold lines and ready for a scrub. The Egyptians are all off the sprue and waiting for their turn under the knife. Somewhere I read that some of you don't bother to carve off mold lines on your 1/72 plastics. I believe it was Cameronian who said that. His figures look quite nice, so maybe there is something to that. I wax and wane on the subject, some of the figures material preclude too much knife work. The HaT catapult, for instance, is almost rubbery.

I've decided for this post to spare you another picture of unfinished figures for the time being.

My plan is to prime white with these figures and follow the guide posted on Legio Wargames here. If I'm not mistaken Prufrock over at Here's no Great Matter had reminded me of this awhile back. So, as is my usual, I started thinking about painting the skin tones of the Egyptians. Now I could just have my standard North European bias and paint them all "flesh" colored, but these are the kinds of things that keep me up at night. Also I had to raid the Nubians for some archers as the Egyptian box did not have enough figures. The angst over appropriately painting African skin tones was palpable. So I had a gander at some google searches and found two articles to be of some use.

This article from Perry Miniatures seemed pretty good. And this thread from TMP lead me to this resource from "Cool mini or not". In the TMP comments Rich Bliss talked about using Raw Umber and Raw Sienna in various layers and washes and that sounded like a good start.

As part of my gamer ADD I picked up a copy of Operation Barbarossa at the library today.

Looks like it will be an interesting read. I've always wanted to do an Eastern Front campaign and in noodling around I found this from Historical Board Gaming (dot) com. They seem to make a lot of accessories for Axis & Allies.

Welcome to new followers Pete from SP's Project Blog. It doesn't show on his google friend connect, perhaps because it's a wordpress blog. Good adaptation of THW's NUTS rules for modern engagements. Plus lots of other fun games and scenarios. And also welcome to Tom Keegan of Wargaming the French and Indian War a blog dedicated to the game Muskets & Tomahawks, which I know several of you play. He has some really impressive pictures of figures and terrain for this, check him out.

You know what comes after the break. Not too racy this time.

Now to transition in to fine eating establishments in Metro Phoenix. We tend to eat out a lot on the weekends. My kids are starting to want to choose where to go. Last night my daughter chose Sandbar, a Mexican beach themed restaurant.

From smokinghotwaitresses.com

Today my son chose the Tilted Kilt. Well actually he had want ed Cheesecake Factory, but we ate there last weekend and the name of this place sounded familiar but I had never been there.

From smokinghotwaitresses.com

There was a staggering amount of cleavage and belly buttons in this establishment. I must say it was quite difficult to have a meal while trying not to make eye contact or let your eyes wander in front of your wife and children.

My wife has decided that there is an opportunity for an establishment with scantily clad male servers, but all I can see in my minds eye is Nick Swardson's character Terry, from Reno 911.

Oh, looks like you've been suffering. Right under my faculty (and in walking distance of another 2, so a great location) is an eatery where food is lousy, music is loud (and wrong genre) and waitresses are an exact opposite of what you had a chance to "work with". So, old, missing teeth, and good luck with understanding that language :D. Location seems to be a winner, as people keep going there, though.

Eateries aside, I just wanted to comment on the question of the skin tones of ancient Egyptian people. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art back in the day Egyptian skin tones came in three different "flavors." Egyptians from the south - what we might call the Sudan, were pretty dark in complexion, a dark brown to almost blue black. There were also Egyptians who had a much lighter complexion described as almost "pink tan" but which was darker than the people of the Mediterranean Coast and the delta who looked like the people of Crete and Greece, or the various Semites to the northeast of Egypt who had a swarthy complexion. This can be verified by a fragment on display in the museum (at least the last time I was there about ten years ago)in which a tan skinned queen is being attended by three ladies in waiting who each represent one of the skin tones I mentioned.JerryA/K/A The Celtic Curmudgeon

I seem to be late to getting to comment. when I first started painting Ancients in 1980, everybody had Tamiya Flesh. I stopped for ages and then coming back to it in the 90's realised that "flesh" did not apply to most of my armies! Luckily I had not painted too many. With the figures I have bought, the flesh for Indians, Egyptians, Persians etc vary from a very very dark brown to light brown but not a "flesh" colour to be seen. I did have to paint up a few Egyptians last year and use a Tamiya Flat Earth, mostly because I had that around. Not suggesting you use that, but flesh colours is worth staying up at night thinking about!

Thanks for commenting Shaun, no problem, I too am a tad behind on reading and commenting. I'm going to be working with various shades of Umber and Sienna and see how that works. I'll be sure to post my results.